


I've Got You

by caitfair24



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Fluff, dad!bucky, parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 15:46:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18781321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caitfair24/pseuds/caitfair24
Summary: Bucky spends some quality time with his son. My submission for day 10 of @itsbuckysworld's Hello Spring Writing Challenge on Tumblr. The prompt was "Allergies."





	I've Got You

The session finished, as usual, with spent emotions and powdered doughnuts -- a knot of purged veterans gathering around the refreshments table at the back of the main room. Alexis, the youngest member of his group -- and consequently, the one he tended to worry about the most -- held out a cinnamon sugar twist, but Bucky had to wave it off with a smile. The faint buzzing of the phone in his pocket was more demanding than a sweet craving. **  
**

Once in the privacy of his cramped office, Bucky slid out his phone, trying to quell the sharp spike of anxiety that burst in his chest at the sight of the caller ID label. _He’s fine; everything’s fine. They wouldn’t call you like this if there was something really wrong. It’s fine, it’s fine_. “Hello?” He winced at the inevitable snap of tension in his voice.

“Hi, Mr Barnes?” The woman’s voice on the other end of the line was vaguely familiar, crisp and friendly. “This is Ms Lahr from St. George’s...I’m calling about your son.”

Instantly, Bucky’s mouth was dry as a desert, heart beating wildly in his throat as he imagined every possible bad thing -- a horror film blooming behind his closed eyes in the split second before the woman continued. A litany of terrible things; a mind tuned to disaster will always go there first, at the most innocuous of inspiration. He simmered for a moment in the dark possibilities, stomach roiling at the thought of his little guy --

“Jack’s fine, Mr Barnes. It’s just, well…” His fear hit a fever-pitch as the woman’s voice faded, shrunk. “He’s having a little trouble. He’s been, um, sneezing all morning, nonstop -- haven’t you, sweetheart?”

_He’s there_. Bucky relaxed into his chair, tension leaching from his muscles as cool relief washed over him. _He’s fine_.

Ms Lahr prattled on, a lengthy explanation involving phrases and words that, to Bucky’s stunned mind, seemed disjointed and illogical, but by the end of the five minute phone call, he’d collected himself enough to gather that, while Jack wasn’t running a temperature, he’d had a little accident and the sneezing was becoming quite a distraction for him and the other students. “We don’t normally like to send students home for something like this,” she explained apologetically, “but the little guy seems pretty exhausted by it all, and we thought maybe you could squeeze in a doctor’s appointment or something? It is a little strange.”

She wanted him to come get Jack.

Bucky glanced down at the day’s schedule on his desk. He had two more group sessions, a Skype call with a deployed colleague, who often helped him to design what they called “runway sessions,” where counsellors would meet with returning service members who’d expressed a desire to immediately begin a stateside life with a constructive therapy session, sometimes right at the airport. Alexis had wanted to meet this afternoon with her boyfriend, but something had come up and they’d had to reschedule for next week. That meant Bucky could breeze through the two hour-long sessions with Jack kept busy in his office, possibly rebook the Skype call, and bring him home.

“Mr Barnes? Should we call your wife? Would that be more convenient?”

  _Shit_. “Uh, no, sorry. Yeah, I can come pick him up. Give me, uh, fifteen minutes?”

In the silence after the click, Bucky leaned heavily on his elbows against the desk. A busy day was scrawled in Post-Its and a fading pen; to his left, a family photograph beamed -- Jack, two years ago, sticky with ice cream; you and Bucky, summer smiles and lit from within with the simply luxury of a life built in LEGOs and love.

The trip was for work. It was important, for her future with the company and the financial security of the entire family. But that didn’t take away the sting of nine days with no Mom; nine days with no Y/n and movies in the evenings, folding laundry together on the couch. Not to mention the fact that, in the six years since Jack’s birth, this was the first time Bucky was actually solo parenting for any extended period of time. It was always the two of them together, always that four-handed efficiency they’d managed to hone so well. An assembly line of parenthood, trading off on the messier jobs and savouring the fun ones together.

At night, Jack seemed to struggle the most. Y/n was always the one to read a bedtime story, to handle bathtime, while Bucky focused on his own routine: ensuring the house was secure, in a rigid, practiced series of steps that, once completed, allowed him to settle on the couch or bed, arms wrapped around his wife and only one ear listening for danger. Those instincts were a hangover from...well, his entire life. A long-ago soldier; highly-trained assassin; recently-retired Avenger -- all melding together now in somebody he’d never expected to be. A husband, a father.

But he couldn’t do the voices. That was Jack’s biggest complaint. The Sunday before she’d left, Y/n had dragged them both to the library, leaving laden with new books, titles she had never read to Jack before. A thick kids’ textbook about NASA; something called _The Book With No Pictures_ that was, the librarian had promised, guaranteed to have them both in stitches. Somehow, though, every reading fell flat: Jack didn’t like that Bucky read in his normal voice. “Mom always does a funny one,” he’d said with a limp shrug just the night before, after Bucky had raced through three books involving woodland creatures in various ridiculous scrapes.

Then there were the school lunches, getting out of the door on time, remembering to pack something cool for him for Wednesday’s show and tell (after a firm conversation about why he couldn’t bring in Bucky’s metal arm). Half a dozen little to-dos every morning that left him spinning and breathless out the door, usually having forgotten some essential element to his own day: phone, keys, wallet, coffee.

And now this. Mysterious sneezing. What the hell did that mean? No temperature, no upset stomach, no real stuffiness -- so far as Ms Lahr was able to report. As he caught a cab to the school, Bucky wracked his brain, trying to figure out what to do once he’d actually picked Jack up. The instinct to text his wife needled him, but he’d been doing a pretty good job of only keeping her abreast of the funny stuff, the happy stories. Keeping the stress and sudden case of parental amnesia to himself, in order to ensure that her trip was as worry-free as possible.

He paused for a moment with his hand on the school door -- indulging in the deep, fortifying breath he always needed to take before taking on this mantle publicly.  Just another parent -- no strange, twisted history; no long-term recovery. It was no secret to most of the teachers, but the kids just saw him as Jack’s dad. And that was the way he liked it.

“Hi, Mr Barnes.” Ms Lahr gave him a warm smile and gestured to the sign-out sheet just in front of her on the desk. Bucky had to carefully avoid knocking into a large vase of wildflowers in order to fill it out. “Jack went back to his classroom for a little while. Would you like to walk down and get him or should I page?”

Finishing off his signature and the reason for Jack’s pick-up, Bucky straightened and rubbed one hand through his beard. “Uh, I can...I can go get him,” he said awkwardly, unsure of any precedent.

She nodded eagerly, flipping her hair a little over her shoulder and flashing him another gleaming smile. “Okay! Room 107.”

 “Great, thanks.”

The hallway leading to Jack’s classroom was lined and crammed with stuff: all the paraphernalia inherent in an elementary school, pressed colourfully against oak panelling. Spring coats and baseball caps; backpacks bright with cartoon characters; scattered sneakers and shoes that Bucky had to, once or twice, kick gently out of his way.

Jack had a Captain America bag, one of about two dozen in the hall -- a tongue-in-cheek birthday gift from Uncle Steve. As he passed by rooms 103 and 105, Bucky finally spotted it hanging near the door to his own classroom, half-concealed by a familiar denim jacket. 

A burst of laughter; running feet. A little girl scurried from the open classroom door, braids bouncing as she came to a screeching halt in front of Bucky, brown eyes sliding up the long length of him curiously. With a nervous smile, he shoved both hands in his pocket, instinctively concealing the silver shine that, he feared, might make her nervous. 

“Hi,” she said, with all the searing directness of a six-year-old. “Who are you?”

Bucky hesitated for a moment, treading a thin precipice. He’d gotten better, over the years, at claiming himself. Reclaiming. Cementing his identity in concise words. “I’m Bucky;” “I’m Y/n’s husband;” Steve’s friend; former Avenger; redeemed man.

But this little girl didn’t care about any of that. None of those identities would mean anything to her -- but one might. “I’m, uh, Jack’s dad.” 

That was the one that still felt strange in his mouth. Not a bad strange, necessarily, but certainly an undeserving one. Since the day Y/n had come to him at the Compound, eyes shining and hands already cupping protectively around her stomach -- he’d tried his hardest to understand this new language. Fatherhood. A little baby, a little hope kindling in his wife’s belly. New words that caught like sweet secrets on his tongue. 

The girl shrugged, tugging his right hand from his pocket and leading him into the classroom. It was a thrumming hive of activity, of noise, of colour -- twenty-odd kids milling about at low, round tables; crayons in hand; by the windows, an aquarium burbled, and a plump bouquet of wildflowers, similar to the ones Bucky had seen in the office, sat on the windowsill nearby. 

He had been in room 107 only once before, and _that_ was during a calm October evening, Y/n’s hand on his knee as they attended a parent/teacher conference. Back then, he’d felt every inch a capable dad, nodding in all the right places, asking good questions about reading levels. 

Now? 

Now he felt bedraggled, caught-off-guard. Did capable dads wear leather jackets to pick up their sneezing sons? Did capable dads have to tuck their metal prosthesis into their pockets to avoid scaring schoolchildren? Did capable dads know a trembling kind of fear in the pit of their stomachs at the advance of a teacher? 

“Hi, Mr Barnes, sir, thanks for coming in. Sir.” Physically, Mr Bryce appeared about the same age as Bucky, but the deferential way he began nervously pumping his hand seemed to suggest the man was all too aware Bucky had a pre-Prohibition birthdate. 

There came a press around the knees, and he almost buckled under the weight. The chaotic weight of Jack, hugging him tight. “Hey, bud,” Bucky murmured, reaching down to stroke one hand through the dark mop of hair. “How’re you feeling?” 

Jack shrugged, a mirror of his mother in the gesture. “My nose feels itchy,” he said, rather nonchalantly, before demonstrating with a violent, rapid-fire series of sneezes that made Bucky cringe. “And I keep doing that.” 

“It’s been all morning, sir,” Mr Bryce added anxiously. “Ever since he came in. We didn’t like to call you, but we’re unsure if he’s actually sick or not. Sorry if that’s a bother, sir.” 

Bucky fought to keep himself from bristling; as though anything to do with Jack would ever be a bother. What would Y/n tell him to do? 

_Breathe. In and out. This isn’t about you_. 

“It’s no problem,” he said smoothly, trying to relax his face into a smile. “We’ll try to get an appointment, get to the bottom of it.” 

There -- there was the capable, twenty-first century dad. 

Mr Bryce nodded, touching Jack’s shoulder lightly. “Don’t forget your home bag, buddy. We’ll see you tomorrow, I’m sure.” 

As his son launched himself -- sneezing twice -- into the business of going home, Bucky couldn’t help but bounce a little on the balls of his feet, unsure of what to say next. Y/n would know -- she always knew what to say, what to do next. How to make people feel comfortable. 

A quick glance over at the nervous man beside him reminded Bucky of a time when he would’ve known what to say, how to make him feel comfortable. Hell, if this were 1942, this poor guy wouldn’t have had an ounce of discomfort. Bucky had been different back then. More open. Lighter. 

So he tried. 

“Uh, nice flowers,” he said, gesturing toward the rainbow of blooms near the window. ( _“Nice fish”_ was second on his list.) 

Mr Bryce smiled, reaching down to pick up a few loose foam blocks on the floor. “Thanks, sir. The garden centre that got the landscaping contract for the school dropped them off. A bunch for every classroom. Actually” -- he paused, grinning down at a returning Jack -- “I was thinking, maybe each one of us could take a flower home today. Would you like to do that?” 

As Jack and his teacher left to go pick out a flower -- one that Bucky promised to display in his office at work -- the same little brown-eyed girl who’d welcomed him into the room suddenly appeared at his side again. She fixed him with a steady, probing gaze far too knowing for her scant years. “You have pretty hair,” she said finally, pointing up at his drooping bun. “It’s like a girl’s, but that’s okay. I like it.”

Despite the nerves still fluttering in his veins -- the biting uncertainty of his own role in this colourful, innocent space -- Bucky smiled. An honest-to-goodness smile, one brimming with a faint rush of warmth. “Thanks,” he said lightly, watching as she skipped away. 

* * *

Jack sneezed the entire way to the VA. And not cute, Disney sneezes -- no, these were great surges of energy, two and three in quick succession, followed by a brief respite, only to resume with an increased intensity. Four times Bucky had to actually stop and crouch down to make sure he was okay.

“Bud,” he said, rubbing his hands down the short length of his son’s arms. “Are you good?” 

But watery eyes and a dripping nose told him otherwise, and with a sigh, Bucky realized he couldn’t, in good conscience, try and get any more work done this afternoon. “Okay, here’s the plan: we’re going to go ask Uncle Sam to take over for me this afternoon. And then we’re gonna call the doctor’s. We’ll figure it out, pal, don’t worry.” 

The urge to text his wife, to call her and just hear her voice, was nearly overwhelming at this point. She would, however, instantly make plans to come home; send him a cascade of panicked texts until they’d gotten to the bottom of the issue. 

No. He could do this. For her and for Jack. 

“Can we still put the flower in your office, Dad?” Jack tucked his hand back inside Bucky’s, squeezing a little as they sidestepped a trashcan. “Or maybe we should take it home.”

“Up to you.” Bucky rooted around in his pocket for his phone. Sam wouldn’t mind taking on the afternoon sessions; and he could definitely reschedule that Skype call. After that would be the doctor, then something for dinner, possibly a trip to the pharmacy -- oh, _shit,_ he’d meant to go to the grocery store before Jack finished school. There was nothing in the house but Pop-Tarts and a few juice-boxes. “Wherever you want.” 

Another sneeze. 

Then another. 

Another. A dozen more before they reached the VA and the quiet hall lined with offices. 

“Hey, big guy.” Sam squatted with his arms outstretched. “What’s up? Did you graduate already?” 

Running his fingers through his hair, Bucky tried to explain. “I can’t get ahold of Julia,” he said, the captain he was supposed to be Skyping with later. “I need to reschedule, and I’ve got the afternoon sessions, and....” 

“Wow, relax.” Sam led them both back inside his office, setting Jack down on the plush couch under the window. “First things first -- Kleenex.” He gestured to Jack’s dripping nose. 

Over coffee and the faint beeping of the game on Sam’s phone that was keeping Jack occupied, a plan was formed. “I really shouldn’t cancel on them,” Bucky argued, crossing his arms and leaning against the wall. “Trust and routine are a big part of recovery, you know that.” 

“Yeah, and I also know you’re a father and you’ve got responsibilities that extend beyond this building.” Sam rolled his eyes and took another sip. “And _they_  know that too, man. Look, I’ll cover your one o’clock, and I’ll get Steve to do the two-thirty. That’ll work out even better, because then he can go straight from that one to his small group session.” 

Bucky sighed, the weight of this strange, twisting day suddenly sitting far too heavily on his shoulders. He’d been to _war_ ; endured decades of horror; lived on the run for two years -- and _this_  was causing him stress? 

Jack sneezed again, this time following it up with a loud groan of irritation. And watching him, Bucky realized why this was hard. Stressful. Because it was Jack. His little boy -- the little boy who wore his father’s dark hair with his mother’s sense of humour. The little boy who’d once asked for a pet octopus; who called Captain America “Uncle Steve” and never once thought to brag or boast about it to his friends. 

The little boy who woke him up in the middle of the night, snuggling in close between him and Y/n -- making Bucky actually wonder how he’d gotten through over a century of sleeping any other way. 

And now there was something wrong. Not tragically, dangerously wrong -- though Bucky had kept himself busy over the past six years envisioning every which way something could go tragically, dangerously wrong -- but just...wrong. A garden-variety disaster. Strange sneezes that wouldn’t quit; a day off-kilter; a barebones fridge and a forgetful father unsure of how to be himself. 

Sam laid a gentle hand on his shoulder, squeezing briefly. “Man, take your kid home. I’m a phone call away, okay?” 

With a nod, Bucky reached for his jacket. “Yeah, okay.” 

* * *

The flower -- pink and a little limp around the edges, but still bright and cheery in the glass -- looked nice on the coffee table, and as Bucky set up Jack with his big box of LEGO, it occurred to him that he should probably see about getting a bouquet ordered for Y/n’s welcome home gift. 

Well, that and a full fridge. And a clean kitchen. And some folded laundry, rather than the mountainous communal hamper he and Jack had been fishing from since Tuesday. 

He pinched the bridge of his nose as he tried the doctor’s office again. There were no open appointments, but he’d asked the receptionist to keep him in mind for any cancellations. There _was_  an evening clinic, she told him, but it was usually quite well-attended. 

Bucky was hesitant to take Jack to the hospital. As the afternoon wore on, his symptoms more and more seemed to resemble a typical cold, and the prospect of dragging him to that pale, antiseptic world that he tended to associate with needles and disgusting medicine just seemed wrong. Not to mention, if he added “hospital visit” to a list of father-son activities he’d planned during his week off, Y/n was likely to freak out. 

No, instead he texted Steve, asked him to pick up some cough medicine, and he got Jack into the tub. Washed his hair and scrubbed him clean, watching at the kitchen table as Jack enjoyed the novelty of eating his school lunch at home. 

He indulged every request, as they bubbled up between sneezes. An extra pudding cup? Of course. Jack wanted to play with LEGO in the _living room_? “Sure thing, pal.” Back-to-back cartoons? Why not? 

Bucky sank into the couch, rubbing a hand over his chin. His bun had come loose an hour ago in the steam of the bathroom; his nerves had dialled up exponentially with each development: watery eyes, stuffy nose, hoarse voice. 

It took Bucky back to his own childhood, to long summer days of sitting inside with a wheezing Steve, reading and drawing and dreaming of the future. He’d never expected _this_ , though, he thought -- never dreamt as a boy in the ‘30s that one day his own son would watch movies on a SmartTV; build towers and spaceships from colourful, plastic blocks; that his wife would be a typed message away, a world of communication and information tucked safe in his pocket. 

“Dad?” Jack turned from the garish cartoon, shoving aside a mountain of blocks to cross the living room and climb up into his lap. “I don’t feel good.” 

Bucky tightened his grip, nestling Jack into his right side, marvelling -- not for the first time -- at how well they fit together. A small hand clutched at the worn grey t-shirt he’d slipped into once they’d arrived home; the scent of citrus shampoo rising from Jack’s still-damp hair. “I’m sorry, bud,” he murmured, stamping a kiss to the crown of his head. “I know this isn’t fun.” 

Another sneeze, this one rocketing through his body weakly. He had nothing left; he was literally exhausted from sneezing. 

“Did you ever sneeze like this, Dad?” he asked, nuzzling in deeper to Bucky’s side. 

Memory tugged. Falling asleep on this same couch, in their apartment back at the Compound, with Jack on his chest. A newborn, tiny and fragile -- he’d been so nervous to hold him. “What if I hurt him?” he’d whispered to Y/n, tears and dark history crowding his throat. 

As always, her kisses had been a balm and a brand, all in one. “You would never. You could never, Bucky,” she’d murmured, pressing love and fatherhood into his skin. “It’s okay.” 

He echoed that pose now, gently pulling Jack a little higher on his chest, sprawled out and around like a koala. “Dad?”

An unanswered question. Jack, with his curious mind, didn’t like those. Bucky apologized, scanning back to the question. “Uh, no, pal. I’ve never sneezed like that. But, you know, Uncle Steve used to.” 

“In the olden days?” 

Bucky couldn’t conceal the wince; Y/n had started that, back when they’d started dating. Back when he’d learned how to adjust himself along the softer contours of a kind of affection he had thought lost and forgotten. “Tell me about the olden days,” she’d chirped, asking about movies and music and food. 

When Jack had come along, she had encouraged Bucky to talk to him about those days, too. It was all part of his recovery, his reclamation of a young man from Brooklyn. His life had stopped, in a way, in 1945; restarted again in a dim, faded apartment worlds away from this cosy, comfortable life he now held in the palm of his hand. In between, there was the dark silence. The knowledge and history he refused to bring into his marriage any more than was strictly necessary; and which he absolutely, without a doubt, would never discuss with his son. Not until, or unless, it was time to do so. 

In this way, Bucky had moved to merge the old and the new. Sergeant Barnes, and Y/n’s husband; Steve’s Bucky, and Jack’s dad. 

A sneeze. 

A sneeze and a few tears, squeezed out from tired eyes. Jack let loose a shuddering breath, snuffling deeply and wetly against his father’s chest. “Yeah,” Bucky said softly, pressing him closer, rubbing comforting circles onto his back. “Yeah, buddy. In the olden days. Uncle Steve used to have a lot of things that bothered him. Sometimes it was hard for him to breathe, and he couldn’t really play sports and games and stuff with the rest of us.” 

“Did he sneeze every day?” 

Bucky chuckled. “Well, sorta. More like wheezing, when he walked too fast or something.” 

He weaved the past for his son, as best he could muster. It was a patchwork quilt of memory, stitched together loosely in most places; accentuated throughout with Steve’s help, with research and trips to museums, where he and Y/n walked hand-in-hand, his baseball cap tucked low over his eyes. She’d tickle the back of his wrist with her fingers, comfort and teasing all at once. “God, I love your hair there,” she’d said once, pointing at a photograph from 1944. When he had joked about cutting it off, though, his wife had looked absolutely horrified, covetously stroking her fingers through his long, dark curtain of hair. 

The most wonderful thing about this new Bucky, this twenty-first century, recovering Bucky? He didn’t have to be anybody else. His wife loved his hair and his smile and the quiet way he kept them safe. His son thought he was the funniest, strongest, best man in the world. There was a poetic simplicity in their acceptance. 

It didn’t take long for Jack to fall asleep against him. Bucky switched off the television and raised his feet to the coffee table, careful to avoid tipping over the flower. It wasn’t quite four o’clock, way too early for both of them to be sleeping, but a little nap wouldn’t hurt...he’d been up six times last night, with the worst of the softer nightmares, the ones of a dark room and faint screams...

_Ding_. 

He jolted. Scrambled for the phone he’d discarded somewhere in the depths of the couch cushions, trying his best not to wake Jack. 

**_Hey, baby! Good news...we sealed the deal and I’ll be home on Friday instead. Can’t wait to see my favourite boys._ **

Bucky slipped into the warm image of her face as she typed the message, thumbs flying in the smooth, rapid tempo he’d never been able to mimic. A string of emojis followed her words, hieroglyphics of love and excitement and strangely, a tooth. 

**_Sorry_** _,_ she wrote a minute later. **_That was too close to the lips emoji. How is everything?!_**

He glanced down at the sleeping boy on his chest, spent from an afternoon of mysterious sneezing. Bucky had yet to actually get to the bottom of it, but he figured he still had a couple of hours, and Steve was due to come over with the medicine any minute; he could get a second opinion then. There was no real point in worrying Y/n, too. 

**Yeah. Everything’s fine. We love you and can’t wait to see you tomorrow.**

Bucky sighed and set the phone down, thinking about his lengthening to-do list. He didn’t want to be the husband that let his house go to absolute hell the minute his wife left -- it was way too predictable. He’d need to clean tonight, do a couple loads of laundry. If Jack was able to go to school tomorrow, he should probably run home between his first morning session and that meeting with an outreach program coordinator, make sure there was food in the fridge and pick some flowers up for Y/n. 

Of course, that still left the issue of tonight’s meal. Cursing himself silently, he realized Bucky should’ve asked Steve to pick up some pizza or something...he glanced down at his phone, only to hear the soft jangle of keys at the door, the turn of the first lock. 

That sound made him tense. Every muscle in his body suddenly alert and ready. Automatically, his mind worked through a possible scenario -- shield Jack, evacuate, turn the table over or run him into the closet, tell him go upstairs, something...anything that would buy him a few minutes to -- 

“Hey.” 

Steve entered the house quietly, setting down a white paper bag on the coffee table, along with a small stack of comic books and blue stuffed dragon. “I went a little overboard,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. “They were just there by the counter when I went to pay, and I thought --” 

“Thanks, Stevie,” Bucky interjected. “This is great. Really, thank you.” 

Careful not to wake Jack, Steve crossed to the armchair he tended to favour when he visited, relaxing into the plush press of it. “How’s he doing?” he asked seriously, leaning forward on his knees, knotted hands dangling between them. “Any better? Sam said he was pretty stuffed up.” 

“Stuffed up, nose running, his eyes are all teary and he can’t stop sneezing,” Bucky murmured, adjusting his shoulder a little under Jack’s head. “I don’t know, punk, maybe I shoulda taken him to the hospital?”   
  
As if he knew he was being discussed, Jack shifted in his embrace, turning slightly to the sound of his godfather’s voice. “Hi, Uncle Steve,” he mumbled, syllables sloppy and drowsy. “When did you get here?” 

A wide grin just for him -- a grin between old friends, six years of pranks and inside jokes. Steve spreads his arms and, despite his obvious sleepiness, Jack bounds clumsily over, settling on his knee and wrapping his arms tight around Steve’s neck. “I got you something,” he said, reaching over to grab the stuffed dragon. “But first” -- he tugged the dragon back a couple of inches from Jack’s reach -- “you gotta tell me what’s been going on. How are you feeling?” 

In the kitchen, still within sight and earshot of the living room, Bucky started preparing the cough medicine. Wild cherry, Jack should like that, he thought, rummaging for a clean spoon. And if that went down well enough, it was probably going to be s’mores-flavoured Pop-Tarts for dinner. 

A sharp boom of laughter cut the low chatter from the armchair, and Bucky spun wildly. “What? What is it?” he asked, glancing rapidly between Steve and Jack, both of whom were now tearing up with raucous mirth. 

“Buck,” Steve coughed. “Uh, the flower. There were some flowers in the school right? His classroom?”

Bucky’s eyes shot to the pink blossom on the coffee table. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “And in the office.”

“He doesn't have a fever, no nausea, and there’s no real cough,” Steve pointed out, wiping at his eyes as he set Jack down on the hardwood floor. “I think - I think he’s just got allergies, Buck. To the flowers. Maybe the, uh, pollen or something?” 

Relief was a tidal wave, and he welcomed the force of it. Bucky was scarcely aware of the rest of the evening, as it passed in Steve’s amusement, s’mores Pop-Tarts, and greasy pizza. When the flower was tossed out into the yard, Jack started to brighten considerably, the sneezes fading away and his mood improving. By bedtime, though, he was wired -- the power-nap in the early afternoon had done him more harm than good, but Bucky decided -- capable, twenty-first century dad that he was -- to put him to work. 

Together, until well past nine, the two of them tidied the living room, the playroom. Jack made his mother a welcome home card with crayoned flowers, since the real thing wouldn’t work now, and he curled up in his bed by about nine-thirty, Bucky having found him dozing on the couch, buzzed and tired and completely drained by his strange, strange day. 

Bucky jotted down a grocery list and got through three loads of laundry before one o’clock that morning. He sent along a good morning text to Y/n, knowing that she always turned her phone to silent during the night. He slid between his own sheets by two, chuckling a little to himself about the day he’d had. 

A day he’d never imagined. 

A day he’d never thought he deserved. 

His metal hand on the door handle of a school, entering to save, to protect. Loving, mushy texts from his wife. Friends to advise, soldiers to support, cinnamon sugar twists to barter in hope. A house that he could secure so easily, even as threats itched at the back of his neck and he slipped -- tasting risk and faint fear on his tongue -- into slip, knowing he there was a chance for nightmares. That the weight of his own history sat shakily on the margins of every normal, wonderful day he was given. 

_Pollen_. Pollen. The biggest threat to his son today had been a bouquet of flowers. It was a threat quickly neutralized; a worry firmly dashed. A charmingly embarrassing anecdote to add to Y/n’s “dad stories” repertoire. _There_  was her real welcome home gift. 

In the deep velvet of the night, a little form came crawling into his bed, blue dragon in hand. “Dad? Can I sleep with you?” 

And in a sleepy exchange of “ _I love yous_ ,” the day ended, melting away in exhaustion and quiet laughter. Jack snuggled up close, tucking his head into the safe refuge of his father’s neck, arms tight around him. Bucky thought back to sleepless nights under a European moon; to the watchful vigils he’d kept on the run in Paris, in Berlin, in Bucharest. How, he wondered, how had this all led him here? To a little boy who loved him -- a little boy who had stolen his heart and then some, more love than he had imagined it possible to possess? And a woman who, though she slept four states away tonight, seemed somehow so present there with them, as though her head lay on the pillow and her hands reached over to join them, to clasp them all together? 

Peacefully, uninterrupted by nightmares or dangers, and with this wonder still glowing in his mind, Bucky slept -- even through the text that bloomed bright in the dark of their shared bedroom. 

**_I missed my boys too much. I’ll be home at ten -- how about you both take the day off? :)_ **


End file.
